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PSP Q&A

Rounding out our weekend of PSP coverage is the Q&A discussion we had in the
forums. It's pretty self explanatory, so here it is:

What kind of memory card does it take?

It takes a Sony Memory stick Duo or Pro. The value pack comes with a 32 meg
duo card, but you can buy them up to 1GB. They are several hundred dollars at
that size though. The cards are tiny, and VERY easy to lose.

The PSP is region-free, correct? So you could just import a Japanese
version now and not have to get another one once the NA version comes out? The
only downside I could think of right now is that it would be really overpriced
to import one right now, and a lot of stuff would be in Japanese...

Sony's official stance as far as region coding for games is "It's up to the
developer." They said it's region free because they envision people traveling
the world, picking up games from wherever, but I guess to appease some
publishers, they left the ability to have a lockout in the system.

Movies will be region encoded, but the PSP has the ability to playback multiple
soundtracks, so if you had a Japanese disc with a secondary English track, in
theory, you could select that and listen.

How comfortable is the analog stick? It looks tiny, so I'm wondering how
comfortable it would be to use.

I like the analog stick. You won't like it for the first 30 seconds, then
you'll start to get used to it. After about a minute and a half, you'll pretty
much have the hang of it, and then it's great. After being annoyed at the lack
of analog on the DS, the analog on the PSP is great.

Is the hardware as flawed as it has been made out to be?

My PSP does in fact have a tiny piece of dust under the screen. Thankfully
you can only notice when the screen is on, but dark. You also can't notice it
during gameplay. I think most of the reports are exaggerated by the fanboys that
populate forums, though there are obviously some issues for some people.

Do you recommend importing or waiting for the release here?

I would probably recommend waiting until the US launch, unless you've got
some disposable income, and you don't mind getting less than 100% out of the
game, since there's a fair amount of Japanese in the games. You can easily
figure out games like Ridge Racers and Golf if you don't know any Japanese, but
you might get frustrated here and there when you accidentally quit a game, or
delete a save because you didn't know what the menu option was.

How about the battery life? I know it's better than what we feared, but I
still haven't seen any report (other than GAF people stating that it's 5 hours
per battery pack).

I still have not been able to sit down and run a battery down from 100% to
zero, but based on what I've played so far, it's probably 4-5 hours, and it's
certainly not the 90 minute malarkey that a few sites said. I did about 45
minutes of races in Ridge last night, about 45 minutes today, left it in sleep
for a few hours, played a few rounds of Hot Shots, and I still have 61% battery
left. I can live with that.

I have a friend that's going to Tokyo in about 6 weeks. Think there'll be
any left in stores so he could pick one up for me?

They are shipping units every week, but they are selling out fast. Assuming
the demand gets satisfied somewhat by then, he should be able to find one in 6
weeks. I think by then it wouldn't be terribly hard to find.

Thanks to everyone in the forums for their questions. If there's something
else you're curious about, you can still
head to the forums and ask there; somebody will probably have an answer for
you. That wraps up our weekend coverage of the PSP, thanks for reading!